1 Billion credit per day. That's 42.3% of the combined CPD, and it's rising exponentially. Even Collatz Conjecture wasn't that crazy.

The large bulk of the credits are from SETI.USA. They appear to be using USB BitCoin miners that do nothing else but just crunch a algorithm. Unlike GPU and CPU that perform other functions within a computer, these things are devoted to just one simple function. From what I have been able to gather from a BitCoin miner who is in the Information Technology field, these BitCoin miners are very powerful since all they can do is crunch a algorithm to unlock the key to block of BitCoins. This project claims to donate the generated BitCoins to specific charities mentioned on their site, less 15% for their efforts.

One particular cruncher, STE\/E [BlackOps], should reach as of the day of this posting a billion total credits today or tomorrow and as of this writing he generated 265 million points for today. Very impressive.

I've noticed that BOINC's overall 'computing power' (as shown on the home page) went up from 10.030 PetaFLOPS on Tuesday morning to 12.306 PetaFLOPS this (Friday) morning, and is currently displayed as 15.667 PetaFLOPS.

Those USB sticks must be heap powerful juju. Can we make some that work here?

RaymondFO* wrote:

From what I have been able to gather from a BitCoin miner who is in the Information Technology field, these BitCoin miners are very powerful since all they can do is crunch a algorithm to unlock the key to block of BitCoins.

This is true.

Richard Haselgrove wrote:

I've noticed that BOINC's overall 'computing power' (as shown on the home page) went up from 10.030 PetaFLOPS on Tuesday morning to 12.306 PetaFLOPS this (Friday) morning, and is currently displayed as 15.667 PetaFLOPS.

As far as I know, this simple algorithm is using integer arithmetic only.
So this shouldn't be count as FLOPS, since it stands for FLOating Point operations/Second. As a consequence, this ridiculous amount of credit shouldn't be awarded. Today's score is 1.7 billion credits by 500 users. This would tumble the balance of the projects.

Richard Haselgrove wrote:

Those USB sticks must be heap powerful juju. Can we make some that work here?

No, those are some ASIC chips designed strictly to mining purposes, and this project needs floating point calculations.

RaymondFO* wrote:

This project claims to donate the generated BitCoins to specific charities mentioned on their site, less 15% for their efforts

.
This raises the question of efficiency. Maybe it's more efficient to donate money directly for those who need it.

RaymondFO* wrote:

One particular cruncher, STE\/E [BlackOps], should reach as of the day of this posting a billion total credits today or tomorrow and as of this writing he generated 265 million points for today. Very impressive.

It is, but not the way I like to be impressed.

RaymondFO* wrote:

One particular cruncher, STE\/E [BlackOps], should reach as of the day of this posting a billion total credits today or tomorrow and as of this writing he generated 265 million points for today. Very impressive.

Retvari Zoltan* wrote:

It is, but not the way I like to be impressed.

I agree with you and that was not meant to be a compliment. My attempt at subtle sarcasm was not effective. My apologies for the misunderstanding.

My post should also be read as sarcasm, especially the bit about the USB sticks.

I use Bitcoinminers too with summary 4,6Ghash, but i would never get the idea to cheat my Credits on BOINC with that O.o

And yes, these Miners can only! do that. My 4,6Ghash need only 16Watt but has the power of 6*HD7970 Cards bitcoinwise.

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DSKAG Austria: http://www.dskag.at

The BitCoin Utopia project isn't research, it's a mining project that provides some funding for research projects.

ASIC's are not computer processors or co-processors, their design is bespoke, to compute specific algorithms. ASIC's only have one purpose - to mine.

As ASIC's are not processors or co-processors, they don't have computing power, they have mining power, which is incompatible with the Boinc credit system.

It's been clear for years that there should be different credit systems for different device types.
GPU's are obviously very different form CPU's, and ASIC's can only compute a few algorithms (albeit very well).

Even with GPU's, CUDA capable devices are very different from OpenCL/GL only devices and double precision is different from single precision. A GTX780Ti is 12% more efficient at SP than a Titan, but poor at DP. The Titan Z is good at DP (comparable to a top AMD) but very costly.

We now have a huge variety of CPU's, from servers with almost 200 cores, to the likes of Qualicom's ARM processors for smart-phones. RISC processors, workstation processors, standard desktop CPU's, processors for laptops, tablets, palmtops and a variety of Android devices, even processors with iGPU's.

If you consider the instruction set extensions of some processors (SSE4.1/4.2, AVX) you could argue processors should be subdivided/categorised by ability. Most CPU’s are very multifunctional and cater for a huge variety of requirements but many better facilitate some types of processing much better than others.

Then there is the research.
Some research types are Integer intensive, others floting point intensive, and many use specific instruction sets. As a result the relative ability of a CPU at doing one type of work over another can be quite large.

Processing power.
Core count and GHz isn't everything, but and generally speaking, a desktop processor does a lot more work than an Android processor, a good GPU can do a lot more than a CPU but is much more restricted in what it can do. Bespoke mining devices are great at mining, but can only mine.

The current credit system takes no account of the use of supporting hardware either.
Some projects require large amounts of RAM, disk space or bandwidth usage.

So, trying to evaluate the worth of BitCoin Utopia by comparing its fundamentally incompatible implementation of the somewhat imaginary, largely meaningless and overwhelmingly pointless credit system against the also imaginary, meaningless and pointless credit system implementations of more genuine research projects truly is an unprecedented exercise in futile hyperbola.

---

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skgiven wrote:

So, trying to evaluate the worth of BitCoin Utopia by comparing its fundamentally incompatible implementation of the somewhat imaginary, largely meaningless and overwhelmingly pointless credit system against the also imaginary, meaningless and pointless credit system implementations of more genuine research projects truly is an unprecedented exercise in futile hyperbola.

I know, and I agree. But...
I've started this thread because I think that there are many people who choose their hardware for their desired project, and they choose project by the amount of the credit the project awards for their work (because one might think that it's related to the amount of scientific progress they make, and it's quite logical to do it the most cost-efficient way). The amount of the credit awarded was misleading before the BitCoin Utopia boom, but now it's ridiculous on the outrageous level that shocked me: yesterday the 244 active users made 2 billion credits, today 2.44 billion, and I think this should be undone.
The main difference between BitCoin Utopia and the other projects is that the "somewhat imaginary" credits earned on BTC Utopia is in relation to the amount of real world things (i.e. money) they give away (which is a good thing by the way), but in my world BOINC is *not* about making money, therefore I take the mixing of money-mining with volunteer distributed computing as an abuse and as an offense (because of the undue amount of credit awarded).
I know that I'm on the wrong forum...

skgiven wrote:

So, trying to evaluate the worth of BitCoin Utopia by comparing its fundamentally incompatible implementation of the somewhat imaginary, largely meaningless and overwhelmingly pointless credit system against the also imaginary, meaningless and pointless credit system implementations of more genuine research projects truly is an unprecedented exercise in futile hyperbola.

I know, and I agree. But...
I've started this thread because I think that there are many people who choose their hardware for their desired project, and they choose project by the amount of the credit the project awards for their work (because one might think that it's related to the amount of scientific progress they make, and it's quite logical to do it the most cost-efficient way). The amount of the credit awarded was misleading before the BitCoin Utopia boom, but now it's ridiculous on the outrageous level that shocked me: yesterday the 244 active users made 2 billion credits, today 2.44 billion, and I think this should be undone.
The main difference between BitCoin Utopia and the other projects is that the "somewhat imaginary" credits earned on BTC Utopia is in relation to the amount of real world things (i.e. money) they give away (which is a good thing by the way), but in my world BOINC is *not* about making money, therefore I take the mixing of money-mining with volunteer distributed computing as an abuse and as an offense (because of the undue amount of credit awarded).
I know that I'm on the wrong forum...

I mentioned that BOINC's overall FLOPs count (across all projects) had risen from 10.030 PetaFLOPS on Tuesday morning to 15.667 PetaFLOPS on Friday night. This figure is calculated (reverse-engineered) from the total credit awarded, so I'm pretty sure the two rises are related - and as you said, it's crazy that an integer project should change a floating-point measure to such a degree.

Yesterday, the BOINC figure was reading 17.063 PetaFLOPs. I've been pestering David Anderson by email about the absurd over-claim, and tonight it's dropped back down to 6.630 PetaFLOPS. I don't know if the two events are related (I haven't had a reply to my last email), but I feel more comfortable if BOINC doesn't make claims which seemed to be verging on the fraudulent.

Cobblestones 1-0 Cobblers
Result!

skgiven wrote:

So, trying to evaluate the worth of BitCoin Utopia by comparing its fundamentally incompatible implementation of the somewhat imaginary, largely meaningless and overwhelmingly pointless credit system against the also imaginary, meaningless and pointless credit system implementations of more genuine research projects truly is an unprecedented exercise in futile hyperbola.

I know, and I agree. But...
I've started this thread because I think that there are many people who choose their hardware for their desired project, and they choose project by the amount of the credit the project awards for their work (because one might think that it's related to the amount of scientific progress they make, and it's quite logical to do it the most cost-efficient way). The amount of the credit awarded was misleading before the BitCoin Utopia boom, but now it's ridiculous on the outrageous level that shocked me: yesterday the 244 active users made 2 billion credits, today 2.44 billion, and I think this should be undone.
The main difference between BitCoin Utopia and the other projects is that the "somewhat imaginary" credits earned on BTC Utopia is in relation to the amount of real world things (i.e. money) they give away (which is a good thing by the way), but in my world BOINC is *not* about making money, therefore I take the mixing of money-mining with volunteer distributed computing as an abuse and as an offense (because of the undue amount of credit awarded).
I know that I'm on the wrong forum...

Yes but....if BitCoin Utopia were to start actually FUNDING other Boinc projects that have lost their regular funding sources then I think that could be a game changer. Or even if each project could figure out how to do some form of that on their own, then the near constant funding issues might go away. I guess I am suggesting a sub-project at each project, that needs it, that crunchers could help generate money for a project, but NOT do any real Science in the process.

For instance if GpuGrid needed a new Server, they could open up a sub-project and let some people crunch just to create bitcoins for the Project to use for that purpose, earning Boinc credits for themselves too, but NOT doing any real Science. Then when enough money is raised the sub-project would be scaled back, or even closed, until it is needed again.

That's exactly what we did in the past with Donate@Home.
But now it's not feasible anymore to crunch bitcoins with GPUs. Mostly with ASICS as people said.

You mean like this for 20 US dollars on Amazon:


http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=scrypt+miner&tag=mh0b-20&index=aps&hvadid=3527303871&ref=pd_sl_1sdp0j81oy_pp

Or this one for 5 US dollars:


I realize these are NOT anywhere near new spec parts, but if they work it could be worth 5 or 20 dollars to periodically donate.

If a volunteer can generate more money using those ASICs than their TCO, then a project can do it for itself (of course it's still better for a project to receive only the funding, without the cost of generating it). If a volunteer can generate less money using those ASICs than their TCO, then it's not worth doing, as donating directly the money is more useful. However, if better and better ASICs will emerge, therefore BTC gets cheaper to generate, will this process devaluate BTC itself? (at least until the last unit is generated.) I think BTC is a very temporary thing, so every miner should make haste - which would make BTC even more temporary (contrary to the inventor's intentions). In the end the value of BTC will rise, and speculators will own most of it - but no one would sell it for 'real' money or buy anything for it, as they will wait for another rise in BTC's value - and that will be the end of BTC (and the end of the tinker-speculators' real wealth).

It is expected that more powerful ASIC computational power will emerge to solve the increasingly complex and computational demanding algorithm that generates or "unlocks" newly issued bitcoins. Each bitcoin series/type (I will never call them “currencies” as they are not issued by any sovereign government. Others may feel differently) is designed to issue a finite amount of bitcoins over its computational life. As time goes by, few and few bitcoins should be issued from each individual type/series as the computational demands keeps increasing. The universe or series/types of individually issued bitcoins may increase. It is for this reason why GPU's are now deemed to be poor bitcoin miners and more powerful ASIC equipment to be more desirable to solve/mine that ever increasing single algorithm that unlocks additional bitcoins. These basic premises (finite bitcoin issuance spread out over a long time) should help the individual bitcoin series/type to retain its intrinsic value and not devalue itself. Some would argue (not me) that is what makes bitcoins valuable as no government can inflate the bitcoin and debase its stored value, unlike various world governments that hyper-inflate their currency and debase their currencies intrinsic store value.

For your reference, here is a chart of the various series/types of bitcoins currently available:
https://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

*sign* sad how all these guys can pass my combined 800M in some days -_- its hard to restist not to follow them and abuse my asics for not getting behind...be strong...be strong! o.O

---

DSKAG Austria: http://www.dskag.at

Sorry about your Dog. It hurts to lose a family friend/child.

If a volunteer can generate more money using those ASICs than their TCO, then a project can do it for itself (of course it's still better for a project to receive only the funding, without the cost of generating it). If a volunteer can generate less money using those ASICs than their TCO, then it's not worth doing, as donating directly the money is more useful. However, if better and better ASICs will emerge, therefore BTC gets cheaper to generate, will this process devaluate BTC itself? (at least until the last unit is generated.) I think BTC is a very temporary thing, so every miner should make haste - which would make BTC even more temporary (contrary to the inventor's intentions). In the end the value of BTC will rise, and speculators will own most of it - but no one would sell it for 'real' money or buy anything for it, as they will wait for another rise in BTC's value - and that will be the end of BTC (and the end of the tinker-speculators' real wealth).

The key I think is that once you buy an asic machine you can then donate forever, if you donate cash it is more a one time thing. I can justify a one time expense, and then itty bitty electricity costs over the long term, but justifying a donation periodically seems like more money going out.

If a volunteer can generate more money using those ASICs than their TCO, then a project can do it for itself (of course it's still better for a project to receive only the funding, without the cost of generating it). If a volunteer can generate less money using those ASICs than their TCO, then it's not worth doing, as donating directly the money is more useful. However, if better and better ASICs will emerge, therefore BTC gets cheaper to generate, will this process devaluate BTC itself? (at least until the last unit is generated.) I think BTC is a very temporary thing, so every miner should make haste - which would make BTC even more temporary (contrary to the inventor's intentions). In the end the value of BTC will rise, and speculators will own most of it - but no one would sell it for 'real' money or buy anything for it, as they will wait for another rise in BTC's value - and that will be the end of BTC (and the end of the tinker-speculators' real wealth).

The key I think is that once you buy an asic machine you can then donate forever, if you donate cash it is more a one time thing. I can justify a one time expense, and then itty bitty electricity costs over the long term, but justifying a donation periodically seems like more money going out.

While you may be able to donate the ASIC computational power for forever, the value of the ASIC computational power decreases over time as the computational power needed to unlock additional bit coins increases. At some point, you are better off just making a direct contribution to the charity rather than sending the money off to your local electric utility.

While you may be able to donate the ASIC computational power for forever, the value of the ASIC computational power decreases over time as the computational power needed to unlock additional bit coins increases. At some point, you are better off just making a direct contribution to the charity rather than sending the money off to your local electric utility.

Following your line of reasoning ... since my current CPUs/GPUs will be producing far less work for the project than the CPUs/GPUs available 5 years from now then I should shut them down now and just send the project the money I spend monthly on electricity. Is that correct?

The arguments everyone is making are identical to when GPUs 1st came on the scene. It was the same trauma for those that didn't have a GPU. "It's going to ruin BOINC!". At least with ASIC mining anyone with a USB port can get into the game with a very small investment, $20 versus the hundreds of dollars that were required on the 1st (and current) GPUs.

The benefit to BitCoin Utopia versus Donate@home is that it is primarily using technology that doesn't take CPU/GPU resources away from other projects. Donate used the same resources and therefore it can be argued that it hurt the overall BOINC effort.

Typically projects award credits based on the amount of work being accomplished. A GPU will gain you more credits at "most" projects than running a CPU only. The GPU produces more work than a CPU and therefore should be rewarded higher. The same is true of BU. As someone mentioned, their 4.8Gh/s ASIC is producing more work than 6 HD 7970s. Shouldn't they be compensated for the work they are producing?

You guys are incorrect as to what an ASIC is. It stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit. They ARE processors but they have been designed to perform a limited number of tasks ... very quickly.

I worked for HP for 32 years and we designed and used many ASICs. One ASIC I'm very familiar with did FFTs and inverse FFTS .... very very quickly. The heart of the Seti WU is preforming FFTs. So if someone were to design an ASIC that plugged into your USB port that could compute a Seti WU 1000s of times faster than a GPU would you be complaining because it isn't fair? Particularly since it would use a handful of watts versus hundreds of watts to do the same job. Of course the market is so small no one would every produce one for Seti ... you couldn't sell enough to pay for the development costs.

I agree with the person who mentioned that maybe projects should start their own ASIC mining sub-projects if they need funding. BU has approached MilkyWay@home to contribute to their program MW lost their grant and are in need of funds to continue.